BANGALORE: When Apple announced the launch of iPhone 5C, the bright candy-colored, plastic-bodied, cheaper version of its flagship product - the tech industry went abuzz with Apple’s attempt to target emerging markets with cheaper devices. The emerging market - China, India and Brazil - has seen a tremendous growth of Smartphones in the past two years. But market shares of giants like Apple, Samsung and the erstwhile leader, Nokia is falling rapidly in these markets.

Samsung lost out its lead in the Chinese smartphone market to Xiaomi in Q2. Xiaomi has made quite a name for itself in the four years that it has been around. It makes some of the fastest selling devices in the country and is now in the lead, unseating a company like Samsung is no small achievement.

A report from Counterpoint Research released this week shows that in the second quarter Micromax took a 16.6 percent share of the market. Samsung came in second place with 14.4 percent. In third is Nokia which owns 10.9 percent of the market reports UBERGIZMO.

However, another study, the one by International Data Corporation (IDC), shows Samsung as still the leader but with Micromax fast catching up. With a fourth of the volume, however, Samsung still rules the smartphone segment in India.